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Jacket illustration: Constantine sits among bishops at the Council of Nicaea
in this sixteenth-century fresco from the refectory of the
Lavra monastery on Mount Athos. Photothèque G. Millet,
EPHE Paris. Jacket design: David denBoer.
"If there has been one paramount error in the study of
Christianity in the fourth century, that error has been to
use theological tools to understand political problems. The
result is serious misdiagnosis of the causes, origins, and
nature of Christian coercion. The thesis of this book is simply
that the explanation lies in social processes, not theology.&34;
-- from the Preface.
Historians who viewed imperial Rome in terms of a conflict
between pagans and Christians often regarded the emperor Constantine's
conversion as the triumph of Christianity over paganism. But
in Contantine and the Bishops, historian
H. A. Drake offers a fresh and more nuanced understanding
of Constantine's rule and, especially, of his relations with
Christians.
Given the emperor's role at the time, Drake asks, what were
Constantine's obligations to the empire and to its many religions?
How did these obligations shape his response to Christians
and non-Christians? Constantine, Drake suggests, was looking
for not only a god in whom to believe but also a policy he
could adopt. Uncovering the political motivations behind Constantine's
policies, Drake shows that those policies were constructed
to ensure the stability of the empire and to fulfill Constantine's
imperial duty to secure the favor of heaven.
Despite the emperor's conversion to Christianity, Drake concludes,
Rome remained a world filled with gods and with men seeking
to depose rivals from power. A book for students and scholars
of ancient history and religion, Constantine and
the Bishops shows how Christian belief motivated
and gave shape to imperial rule.
H. A. Drake is a professor
of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
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